OT: web design and screen resolution

[Mike]

Joseph Huber wrote:
> Dunno if I am going to open a can of worms here... anyone out there 
> that has done some web page design (free-lance, during the day job, 
> whatever) have any thoughts on a screen resolution to aim for? I am 
> thinking that 15 inch monitors and 800x600 is pretty much a thing of 
> the past (and that 17 inch is fast going the same way) but that 
> 1024x768 is reasonable resolution. I have a 17 inch monitor at home 
> and usually have the browser maximized... but at work on a 19 inch (to 
> me) having a window maximized seems to make it too big.
>
> I have a hard time arguing with the "design research" behind something 
> like good old Amazon which seems to design for 1024x768 but scales 
> well down to 800x600 (but then me, myself and I don't have Amazon type 
> resources). What looks good assuming 1024x768 doesn't work so much at 
> 800x600 (unless I force a fixed size font which I don't want to do... 
> and Firefox seems to ignore it if I do anyway) and if I make it look 
> good at 800x600 it doesn't look so hot at 1024x768.
>
> I'm getting stuck in a rut where all I'm going to do is worry about 
> resolution for the indeterminate future. Any thoughts welcome...
>
> Joe 

I still go for 800x600 as my base resolution that things will scale down 
to correctly. (if I'm even doing a design that way) Here is an example 
of some statistics I received on 2 of my sites in the past month.

Educational Institution site. (percentage based design)
Jan 2006 with 33117 unique visitors polled.
1280x1024 43.7 %
1024x768 36.4 %
800x600 6.6 %
1280x800 3.6 %
1152x864 2.6 %
Others 6.9 %

Computer related site.(800x600 base design)
Jan 2006 with 41428 unique visitors polled.
1024x768 43.4 %
1280x1024 34.1 %
1280x960 8 %
1152x864 7.1 %
1600x1200 2.3 %
Others 4.8 %

So as you can see for these specific sites with a decent amount of 
visitors.... I can kind of rule out 800x600 as something I'd run into 
very often with these sites. Never the less, I still treat it as the 
bottom of the barrel and continue to give it consideration even in 2006. 
I usually poll the sites for about a month before starting on a template 
change. These are just the 2 I have from last month. A good design can 
easily continue to look good based on 800x600. Just look at things like 
Yahoo, Redhat, Ebay, etc.....

-Mike